Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Mumia Abu-Jamal Court Date Set For May 17 On Federal Appeal

BATTLE ON IN THE ELEVENTH HOUR OF MUMIA’S CASE!

HIS FINAL APPEAL HAS RECEIVED A COURT DATE! READ ON AND BE IN PHILLY MAY 17 TO SUPPORT MUMIA’S FINAL CHANCE FOR RELEASE!

Please Distribute Widely!
3/31 - Organizing Meeting - SF
Legal Update from Attorney Robert Bryan
4/15 - Hip Hop for Mumia - NYC
4/21 - Writers for Mumia - NYC
4/24 - Strategizing Event - Mumia's Birthday - Philadelphia
**5/17** Oral arguments - 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals - Philadelphia

Dear Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal,

The letter below from Attorney Robert Bryan indicates that oral arguments have been set for May 17, 2007 for Mumia Abu-Jamal's case. We have been waiting for this moment for over a year. There will be a mass mobilization in Philadelphia - details TBA (for now, see other important dates in NY and PA below). We are planning events in northern California in solidarity with MUMIA and need your help.

Organizing Meeting:

Sat, 3/31, 10:30 am
298 Valencia St. (at 14th St., near 16th St. Bart Station)
San Francisco, CA
415-255-1085

Please join us as we plan future events including a celebration of Mumia's 53rd birthday, April 24th.

!!FREE MUMIA!!

In solidarity,

Jeff Mackler and Laura Herrera
Co-Coordinators
The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
San Francisco, CA
415-255-1085
The freemumia.org website will be available on Saturday night, 3/24 (very sorry for temporary tech problem)

[Note: "help 'em fry the ni - - er" is misspelled only to avoid email profanity filters that would prevent this message from reaching some recipients if the text were to be copied for email distribution]
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March 22, 2007
Legal Update

Re: Mumia Abu-Jamal v. Martin Horn, Pennsylvania Director of Corrections
U.S. Court of Appeals Nos. 0 1-90 14,02-900 1 (death penalty)

Dear Friends:

Today notification was received that oral argument in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, is scheduled on Thursday, May 17, 9:30 am, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Ceremonial Courtroom, 1" Floor, U.S. Courthouse, 6"' and Market Streets, Philadelphia. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and the National Lawyers Guild, which have filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, are also participating.

This case concerns Mr. Abu-Jamal's right to a fair trial, the struggle against the death penalty, and the political repression of an outspoken journalist. Racism and politics are threads that have run through this case since his 1981 arrest. The complex issues under consideration, which are of great constitutional significance, include:

Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied the right to due process of law and a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because of the prosecutor's "appeal-after-appeal" argument which encouraged the jury to disregard the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and err on the side of guilt.

Whether the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude African Americans from sitting on the jury violated Mr. Abu-Jamal's rights to due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and contravened Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).

Whether the jury instructions and verdict form that resulted in the death penalty deprived Mr. Abu- Jamal of rights guaranteed by the Eight and Fourteenth Amendments to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and violated Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367 (1988), since the judge precluded the jurors from considering any mitigating evidence unless they all agreed on the existence of a particular circumstance.

Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments during post-conviction hearings as the result of the bias and racism of Judge Albert F. Sabo which included the comment that he was "going to help'em fry the ni - - er".

Recently the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office sent a letter to the court suggesting that the entire Third Circuit should disqualify itself from deciding the case of my client. We filed a reply strongly objecting to this absurd request, explaining that the position of opposing counsel was "utterly unfounded and should be rejected." On March 10 the court rebuked the prosecution, advising that it had failed to follow proper procedure and thus no action would be taken.

Professor Judith L. Ritter, associate counsel, and I are in this case to win a new and fair trial for Mr. Abu-Jamal. The goal is for our client to be free. Nevertheless, he remains in great danger. If all is lost, he will be executed. Your interest in this struggle for human rights and against the death penalty is appreciated.

Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal

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WRITERS FOR MUMIA CELEBRATING UPCOMING BIRTHDAY
The New York Chapter of the National Writers Union has issued a call, WRITERS FOR MUMIA, in preparing to host a birthday celebration for renown journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The event is scheduled to take place on Saturday, April 21 (details to follow).

All poets, fiction and non-fiction writers interested in participating should contact Susan E. Davis (sednyc@earthlink.net) or Louis Reyes Rivera (Louisreyesrivera@aol.com). There'll be a ten-minute restriction on speakers.

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The FOP Attacks Donald Payne, one of the 31 representatives who opposed the House Resolution condemning the naming of "Rue Mumia" in Saint-Denis, France

The Fraternal Order Of Polive (FOP), having successfully intimidated Chaka Fattah, is now going after Donald Payne, former chair of the Congresssional Black Caucus, signer of the 1995 Fattah pro-Mumia letter, a clear ally in the past, and having recently been one of the courageous 31 who opposed the House Resolution condemning Saint-Denis. See below for the details of this campaign in the form of the FOP press release.

Call Congressman Payne's office, write, fax, etc. to express your support. Details will be forthcoming. This is the government/FOP terrorism. Note how the FOP describes its power to intimidate those who might even consider opposing them.

Please call, fax, or e-mail Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey, to thank him for his principled "no" vote re the December 6th vote to condemn Saint-Denis for naming a street in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Urge him to stay strong in the face of the FOP attempts to punish and intimidate him.
ATTENTION NEW JERSEY RESIDENTS, PARTICULARLY IN PAYNE'S CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: YOUR SUPPORT IS PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT.
Donald Payne's contact info:
phone: (202) 225-3436
fax: (202)- 4160

Long live the people's resistance! We will not be intimidated by these cowardly, fascistic, organizations and individuals that pretend to be defenders of "safety". They are violent defenders of the war-making, prison-building, torturing, and killing that violates international law and all standards of justice but which they try to pass off as "law enforcement".
Suzanne Ross, for the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
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FOP PRESS RELEASE

POLICE OFFICERS DEMAND PAYNE BE DROPPED FROM ST. PATRICK'S DAY

HONORTRENTON, NJ

The Fraternal Order of Police * New Jersey State Lodge has asked organizers of Newark's St. Patrick's Day parade to reverse their decision to dedicate this year's parade to U.S. Congressman Donald M. Payne.

The police organization made its request by letter to Kevin P. Frey, general chairman of the St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee."Congressman Payne does not deserve this honor," said FOPNJ president Edward R. Brannigan. "His disrespect for police officers and apparent sympathy for a convicted cop killer is repugnant and undeserving of any honor."

On December 6, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to condemn a decision by St. Denis, France to rename a street in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Known at the time as Wesley Cook, Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering 25-year-old Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981.The House resolution condemning the street renaming passed by an overwhelming 368-31 vote. Payne was one of the 31 House members to vote against the resolution."Congressman Payne's vote against condemning an honor for a convicted cop killer is a slap in the face of every law enforcement officer and the family of Daniel Faulkner," said Brannigan, a retired Newark police officer and Grand Marshal of the city's 2004 St. Patrick's Day Parade. "Newark's St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee should reverse its decision to honor Payne, or risk sullying it's own reputation by disrespecting Officer Faulkner's sacrifice."

The Fraternal Order of Police is the world's largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers, with more than 318,000 members in more than 2,100 lodges. The FOP is the voice of those who dedicate their lives to protecting and serving our communities. It is committed to improving the working conditions of law enforcement officers and the safety of those we serve through education, legislation, information, community involvement, and employee representation.

CONTACT: Ernest Landante, Jr., Novita, 609-989-1000
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Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) * info@freemumia.com * (212) 330-8029

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TO SIGN ON TO THIS LETTER, SEND YOUR NAME AND ORGANIZATION TO: mark.taylor@ptsem.edu

An Open Letter To John Conyers, Jr.
Chair, House Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives

1. We the undersigned demand that you initiate formal hearings and inquiry to reconsider House Resolution 1082 (December 6, 2006) that condemned the city of St-Denis, France, for naming a street in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and also called upon France's national government to take action against St-Denis.

2. We denounce the Resolution's intervention into St-Denis' municipal affairs and into those of a foreign sovereign nation. We would not expect the U.S. government to take action against one of its own cities because a foreign legislative body disagrees with a decision made by a U.S. city, and it is outrageous for a U.S. legislative body to now call for French governmental action against St-Denis. We commend the 31 House members who voted against such an unacceptable resolution.

3. We reaffirm what was clear from St-Denis's inaugural act for creating "Mumia Abu-Jamal Street:" its intention to express opposition to the death penalty world wide, and appreciation for Abu-Jamal's exemplary advocacy for justice. We applaud St. Denis for its vision and courage in highlighting Abu-Jamal's struggle.

4. We protest the haste of the Resolution, a condemnation of St-Denis that was rushed through the House of Representatives in the last three days of the previous, 109th Congress, and under a suspension of rules without benefit of a single hearing or of any of the usual considerations by the House Committee on the Judiciary.

5. We disapprove of the Resolution's interjection of legislative powers into a judicial matter that is still alive and pending before a court of law. H.R. 1082 conveniently hides this fact, being silent about four crucial claims in Abu-Jamal's case that are now being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

6. We object to the Resolution's false claim that Abu-Jamal was tried by "a jury of his peers." The truth is that this very issue was accepted as a ground for appeal of his conviction by the Third Circuit. In fact, Abu-Jamal's jury was purged of 11 qualified African-American jurors by the prosecutor's unconstitutional use of peremptory challenges, leaving only 2 African Americans among the 12 who decided on his case and his sentence in a city that is 44% African American.

7. We find scandalous that the language of the Resolution has such careless disregard for the facts that it invents new inflammatory rhetoric about the case, claiming wrongly, for example, that Abu-Jamal "struck Officer Faulkner four times in the back with his gun," a point not even made by the prosecutors at the original trial.

8. We register our grievance that this Resolution was passed over your vote and spurns past actions of support by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL). In 1999, the CBC claimed that in Abu-Jamal's case "treatment of evidence and application of justice had been arbitrary and inconsistent," and a 2004 resolution of the NBCSL joined with organizations the world over to call for a new trial and his release from prison.

9. We deplore how this hastily-enacted resolution entangles the U.S. Congress in making Abu-Jamal more vulnerable to a hasty execution. The rush to judgment and execution leaves numerous issues insufficiently addressed by the courts, even by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, whose comprehensive rulings against Abu-Jamal, according to a meticulous study by Amnesty International in 2000, were sullied by the connections of at least five of the Pennsylvania justices to the Fraternal Order of Police that still campaigns openly for his execution. One of the justices ruling against Abu-Jamal, Ron Castille, did not recuse himself, even though he was a former Philadelphia D.A. who had previously filed briefs against Abu-Jamal. Among the issues still awaiting adequate and full airing are these: (a) the failure of police to do basic investigative acts like ballistics checks, fingerprinting, and securing of the crime scene; (b) the bribing, exclusion or intimidation of important witnesses against Abu-Jamal; (c) prosecutors' intentional efforts to prevent African Americans serving on Abu-Jamal's jury; (d) the existing and mounting evidence that yet another man was in the car stopped by Officer Faulkner on the night of his killing and that Faulkner had this other man's driver's license in his pocket; (e) a court stenographer's affidavit that she heard the original trial judge, Albert Sabo, say about Abu-Jamal's case, "Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the ni - - er"; (f) the fact that the original prosecutor, Joseph McGill, has been quoted as saying in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Abu-Jamal "could have been convicted of a lesser offense" had he waged "a true defense."

10. We renounce the Resolution's false claim that honoring Abu-Jamal with a street name in St-Denis is an affront to law enforcement. On the contrary, St-Denis' action guards the integrity of law and justice, and even the legacy of Officer Daniel Faulkner, by insisting that all claims about violations of Abu-Jamal's due process and Constitutional rights be investigated and aired fully in courts of law.

THEREFORE, we reaffirm our demand that the House Committee on the Judiciary begin a formal hearing to reconsider the egregious misstep of H.R. 1082, which was passed so hastily by the 109th Congress. The formal inquiry would have the following purposes: (1) to allow all sides, especially representatives from St-Denis, France, to be present and give expression to their views before Congress, and (2) to allow Congress to find an appropriate voice on the matter of Abu-Jamal's case - a voice that respects House legislative processes that are free of hasty decision-making, a voice that does not interject itself into the active legal case of Abu-Jamal, and a voice that would respect the sovereign matters of another nation's city.

Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Suzanne Ross, Free Mumia Coalition (NYC)
Mark L. Taylor, Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Julia Wright, CO

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Hip Hop for Mumia!

Join us Sunday, April 15, 8 pm at the Remote Lounge for a Fundraiser for Mumia!
Featuring:
C Rayz Walz
Immesiah Soul
Queen Godis
A-Alikes
Pat-riot
Seeds of Wisdom!

The Remote Lounge 327 Bowery St (Between 3rd St. and E. 2nd St), NYC
$12, all funds go to International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal
Spread the word!

http://mumia.org

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April 24 -- Be in Philly! Save the date!
We will be at the Clef Club, 738 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, PA. If you can't be in Philly, organize where you are!

Join:
Ron Hampton, of the National Association of Black Police Officers;
Danny Glover, acclaimed actor and activist;
Sonia Sanchez, reknowned poet and revolutionary;
Linn Washington, award-winning journalist and professor;
Harold Wilson, recently exonerated 18 year death row resident;
Ramona Africa, MOVE member and May 13, 1985 survivor!
DeLacy Davis, founder of Black Cops against Police Brutality

View "Framing of an Execution," Learn where Mumia's case is at and what we can all do to bring him home!

http://mumia.org
Posted by at 1 comment:

Is the American Empire on the Brink of Collapse?

Is the American Empire on the Brink of Collapse?

By Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash
Posted on March 24, 2007, Printed on March 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49603/

I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did.
-- Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

Has our "leadership" traded democracy for empire? Have their over-bloated egos convinced them that they are the world's newly crowned colonial kings? Author Chalmers Johnson is certainly not given to wearing rose-colored glasses. As he concludes in his newest book, Nemesis: "... my country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences."

Johnson's well-argued, persuasive argument draws on the economic, military, and political lessons of the past, which may be just what's needed to wake up Americans in time to change course. In this interview, he explained his hopes and fears for contemporary America.

Mark Karlin: You've written a three-part series of books on the United States as an empire. The first was called Blowback. The second is The Sorrows of the Empire. And, now, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. That's kind of a doomsday declension there.

Chalmers Johnson: I guess you could say that. It's inadvertent. I didn't set out to write three volumes. I don't know whether Gibbons set out to write The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire. But one led to the other.

The first was written well before 9/11, and it was concerned with what I perceived to be the American public's lack of understanding that most of the foreign policy problems of the 21st century were going to be things left over from the Cold War. Above all, I argue that our numerous clandestine activities, some of which are almost totally disreputable, will come back to haunt us.

The second book followed on the first, in that it was a broad analysis of what I called our military-based empire, an empire of 737 American military bases in over 130 countries around the world. That number is the official Pentagon count. They are genuine military bases. They're very extensive. They are not, as some defenders of the Pentagon like to say, just Marine guards. We haven't got 700 embassies around the world. The Sorrows of Empire was written as we were preparing for our invasion of Iraq, and it was published virtually on the day that we invaded.

Karlin: And now Nemesis is your cataclysmic conclusion. Not long ago, it was considered sort of radical to say that America is a neo-colonial empire. But you embrace that concept in many ways.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: The perspective in much of the neocon writing, in The Weekly Standard, for instance, is that America is an empire. It's a superpower. It can take whatever it wants. Basically, the rule of thumb becomes, if you challenge the U.S. assertion of military control and dominance, you're an enemy of the United States. You don't have to threaten the United States, but merely oppose the imposition of the military authority.

Johnson: Quite true. The roots of this military empire go back, of course, to World War II, which is when we conquered Germany, Japan, Italy, places of that sort, and did not withdraw after the war was over. We've been in Okinawa, for example, ever since 1945. The people there have been fighting against us ever since 1945, in three major revolts -- they hate it.

But the critical point comes with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Paul Wolfowitz, who was then in the Department of Defense working for Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, wrote that our policy now is to prevent any nation, or combination of nations, from ever having the kind of power that could challenge us in any way militarily.

This is when we really invite "Nemesis," the goddess of retribution, vengeance, and hubris, into our midst by proclaiming that we "won" the Cold War. It's not at all clear that we've won the Cold War. Probably, we and the U.S.S.R. lost it, but they lost it first and harder because they were always poorer than we were. The assumption was that we were now the global superpower; we were the lone superpower; we were a new Rome. We could do anything we wanted to. We could dominate the world through military force.

This is as clear a statement of imperial intent as I think one could imagine, and it is what leads to such radical ideas as war as a choice, preventive war, wars such as that in Iraq, which was essentially to expand the empire by providing a new stable base for us in the Middle East, having lost Iran in 1979, and having so antagonized the Saudis that they were no longer allowing us to use our bases there the way we like.

So, yes, I think the word imperialism is appropriate here, but not in the sense of colonization of the world. I'm meaning imperialism in the sense of, for example, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War after World War II. That is, we dominate places militarily, we insist on local satellite-type governments that are subservient to us, that follow our orders and report to us when we ask them to. Yet we have troops based in their territories. They are part of our global longevity.

Karlin: We've heard both Bush and Cheney repeat their mantra that the troops won't come home until our mission is accomplished, until we achieve victory. It's somewhat fascinating, in a very tragic sort of way, to try to figure out what the heck these guys are talking about. We have seen from both of them so many different missions publicly stated. First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then it was regime change. When we changed the regime and found out there were no weapons of mass destruction, we suddenly developed new missions.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: Now it's not clear what the mission is. Bush just says let's complete the mission. I've speculated on my site Buzzflash that this is sort of a policy of white man's rule, coming from the days of the Confederacy, where, if you were a white male, you were entitled to run a plantation, or whip your slave. You were the head of the household, no matter what.

Johnson: I wouldn't put it in racist terms, but you're quite right. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that at the root of all imperialism, there has to be a racist view.

Karlin: When Bush says we have to accomplish the mission, or Cheney says we have to achieve victory, the question hangs out there as to what our mission is now? And what could possibly be victory in these circumstances? To them, mission or victory mainly means that we are perceived as winning and Iraq remains under our control.

Johnson: I believe that's absolutely true. It's one of the reasons why we didn't have a withdrawal strategy from Iraq -- we didn't intend to leave. Several people who retired from the Pentagon in protest at the start of the war -- I'm thinking of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman particularly -- have testified that the purpose of the invasion was to establish a new, stable pillar of power for the United States in the Middle East. We had lost our main two bases of power in the region -- Iran, which we lost in 1979 because of the revolution against the Shah, whom we ourselves placed in power -- and then Saudi Arabia, because of the serious blunder made after the first Gulf War -- the placing of American Air Force and ground troops in Saudi Arabia after 1991. That was unnecessary. It's stupid. We do not have an obligation to defend the government of Saudi Arabia. It was deeply resented by any number of sincere Saudi patriots, including former asset and colleague, Osama bin Laden. Their reaction was that the regime that is charged with the defense of the two most sacred sites of Islam -- Mecca and Medina -- should not rely upon foreign infidels who know next to nothing about our religion and our background.

The result was that, over the 1990s and going into the 2000s, the Saudis began to restrict the uses we had of Prince Sultan Air Base at Riyadh. They became so restricted that, finally, in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we moved our main headquarters to Qatar and conducted the war from there. This left us, however, with only the numerous small bases we have in the Persian Gulf. But these are in rather fragile countries.

Iraq was the place of choice, to these characters, who knew virtually nothing about the Middle East. Spoke not a word of Arabic or knew even the history of it. Iraq was the one they picked out because it's the second largest source of oil on earth, and it looked like an easy conquest.

We now know that the President himself didn't understand the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam -- that he did not appreciate that Saddam Hussein's regime was a minority Sunni dictatorship over the majority Shia population. That once you brought about regime change there, the inevitable result would be unleashing the Shia population, who had previously been suppressed, to run their country, and that they would align themselves with the largest Shia power of all, a Shia superpower, namely, Iran, right next door, where most of their leaders had spent the period of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.

That's essentially what's happened. It's hard to imagine how this served our interests, given the deep hostility between Iran and the United States ever since we started interfering in that country back in 1953. It is hard to imagine how this served the interests of Israel, in that it gave Shia support there. Support from Iran now spreads throughout the Middle East to Hezbollah, Hamas, and other organizations. And it leads to a contradiction in terms of what we're doing there. At times, we seem to be trying to restore Sunni rule, so that we can bring about some peace. On the other hand, we have no choice but to support the majority power because of our propaganda about supporting democracy at the point of an assault rifle.

Karlin: In Nemesis you draw comparisons to the Roman empire. As you point out, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we became the most powerful nation, at least in our self-perception. But in terms of our economy, we are at the mercy of all the countries that are keeping our economy afloat through loans. Militarily, we have the most powerful weapons, but this seems to have done nothing for us in Iraq.

Johnson: Nothing at all. In fact, sticking to Iraq just for a moment, one of the most absurd things is the fact that we have a defense budget that's larger than all other defense budgets on earth. This army of 150,000 troops that we've sent to Iraq -- a country with the GDP of Louisiana, I'd say --- they've been stopped by 20,000 insurgents. This is a scandal and a discrediting of the military, the Pentagon, and the strategies we've pursued.

But the broad argument that I'm trying to make in Nemesis is that history tells us there's no more unstable, critical configuration than the combination of domestic democracy and foreign empire. You can be one or the other. You can be a democratic country, as we have claimed in the past to be, based on our Constitution. Or you can be an empire. But you can't be both.

The classic example is the Roman republic, on which our country was, in many respects, modeled. They decided, largely through the influence of militarism, to retain their empire. Having decided to retain it, they then lost their democracy due to military intervention in politics after the assassination of Julius Caesar and the coming to power of military dictators. They were termed Roman emperors, but they were essentially military dictators.

There is an alternative model that I advocate in the book. It's not as clear-cut an example, but it is certainly one that's relevant, and that is Great Britain after World War II. After the spectacular war against Nazism, it was brought home to the British that if they were going to retain the jewel in the crown of their empire, namely India, with its huge, vast population, it could do so. It could keep people under its control through military force. They'd used that often enough in India, as it was.

In light of the Nazi experience, though, it now seemed almost impossible to go in that direction. Britain realized that to retain its empire, it would have to become a tyranny domestically. It chose, in my view, to give up its empire. It didn't do it beautifully, and we see imperialistic atavisms all the time, Tony Blair being the best example. But it chose to give up its empire in order to retain its democracy.

The causative issue is militarism. Imperialism, by definition, requires military force. It requires huge standing armies. It requires a large military-industrial complex. It requires the willingness to use force regularly. Imperialism is a pure form of tyranny. It never rules through consent, any more than we do in Iraq today.

The power of the military establishment is what threatens the separation of powers on which our Constitution is based. The Constitution, the chief bulwark against tyranny and dictatorship, separates the executive and legislative and judicial branches. It does not concentrate power in the executive branch, or concentrate money there, or secrecy.

The two most famous warnings in the history of our country address militarism -- namely George Washington's farewell address, read at the opening of every session of Congress, and Eisenhower's speech. Washington spoke of the greatest enemy of liberty as being standing armies. He said they were the particular enemy of republican liberties. He was not opposed to defending the country; he was talking about standing armies, as distinct from armies raised to defend the country in a time of national emergency. It was standing armies, Washington argued, that overbalance the separation of powers, that serve the presidency and destroy federalism.

The next great warning, which was even more striking, were the words of Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. He spoke of the military-industrial complex and its unwarranted, unchecked, unsupervised power and the enormous damage it was doing. This is what I'm talking about in Nemesis, and why I use this, as you put it, very apocalyptic subtitle.

But I do mean it. I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. And we have, as you know, also very serious economic dependencies on the rest of the world now. We are a wholly indebted country. We're not paying for the things we're doing. The sort of news we saw in recent days in the Stock Exchange is entirely predictable.

Karlin: Is the Middle East intervention -- Iraq, and the desire to nuke Iran -- is this empire building in the guise of fighting terrorism?

Johnson: Yes.

Karlin: If there weren't terrorists, Bush and Cheney would have had to invent them?

Johnson: Absolutely. There's just no doubt about it. In fact, we have to say that in any historical perspective, that the response of Bush-Cheney to 9/11 was a catastrophe of misjudgment and almost surely based on interests entirely separate from the terrorist attacks. We enhanced Osama bin Laden's power by declaring war on terrorism, escalating his position. The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11th, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did.

Instead of calling it a war on terrorism, we should have called it a national emergency. We should have gone after the terrorists as criminals, as organized crime, because of their attacks on innocent civilians. Tracked them down -- we have the capacity to do that -- arrested them, extradited them back to the United States, tried them in our courts, and executed them. Had we done that, we would have retained the support of virtually the entire rest of the world, including the Islamic world, as the victims on 9/11.

But we did the opposite. We simply went crazy, and we also refused to acknowledge that the retaliation that came on 9/11 was blow-back. We were partly responsible for what happened, since the people who attacked us were our former allies in the largest single clandestine operation we ever carried out, including Armenians sending into battle of the Mujahideen against the Russians in Afghanistan. Certainly, Osama bin Laden was not unfamiliar to our Central Intelligence Agency. They had been working with him for quite a long time.

It's in that sense that I think it was a catastrophic error. But the truth is, in retrospect, it doesn't look like an error at all. They saw it as an opportunity -- as a golden opportunity to carry out these sort of mad and speculative schemes that they had been working on throughout the 1990s, dreaming that we were this new Rome that could do anything it wants to.

Karlin: What will collapse first in America, according to your scenario, in the last days of the American republic?

Johnson: I'm not Cassandra. I can't make a prediction. If I would look at the historical examples, I would say we could expect that a bloated, overgrown military soon would become unaffordable. It would move in and take over. I don't really expect that to happen, though I certainly should warn you that General Tommy Franks had said publicly in print that in case of another attack like 9/11, he saw no alternative but for the military to assume command of the country.

That would be the Roman answer -- having built this huge militaristic world, and becoming increasingly economically dependent on the military-industrial complex domestically. We don't actually manufacture that much in this country, anymore, except for weapons and munitions. That's a possibility, that the military does ultimately take over, just as in the Roman republic, with that reliance on standing armies instead of legions raised from common citizens because of threats to the country. Ultimately, ambitious generals, often from the establishment, chose to take over. All they asked for was dictatorship for life, by God, and that's what they got.

It isn't inconceivable that one could have a renaissance in popular opinion. And that is needed. We need to rebuild the Constitutional system to overcome that most peculiar of anomalies. We know about the imperial presidency. We know about Dick Cheney's ambitions. It's one thing after another. So why is the Congress simply abdicating its role as the main point of oversight, the main source of authority?

I live in the 50th District of California, where Duke Cunningham was sentenced to federal prison for eight and a half years for being the biggest single bribe taker in the history of the U.S. Congress. It's significant, of course, that the people bribing him were defense contractors. It was a case of us getting crummy weapons, in order simply to line their own pockets.

There's far too much of that. Not enough has been done about it. We have procedures in this country for dealing with unsatisfactory political leaders, for removing the incompetent from office. It's called impeachment. Last November, the American public brought the opposition party into power in Congress, and immediately the leaders of the opposition party said impeachment is off the table. Well, if impeachment is off the table, then it may well be that Constitutional democracy is off the table, too.

If you had asked me what I think actually will happen -- and again, I cannot foresee the future -- the economic news encourages me in this thought. I believe we will stagger along under the façade of constitutional government until we're overtaken by bankruptcy. Bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States, any more than it did for Germany in 1923, or China in 1948, or Argentina just a few years ago, for 2001 and 2002.

But it would mean a catastrophic shake up of the society, which could conceivably usher in revolution, given the interests that would be damaged in this. It would mean virtually the disappearance of all American influence in international affairs. The rest of the world would be greatly affected, but it would begin to overcome it. We probably would not.

That's what I think is the most likely development, given the profligacy of our government in spending money that it doesn't have, in borrowing it from the Chinese and the Japanese, and the defense budgets that are simply serving the interest of the military-industrial complex.

Karlin: Polling has shown that most Americans want some sort of withdrawal from Iraq based on timetables. They want this war over. The Democratic electoral victory was perceived to be a victory to close down the Iraq war. The majority of Iraqis support attacks on American soldiers. Why is Bush talking about trying to save Iraq from the terrorists, if 62% support attacks on American soldiers?

Johnson: That's exactly the point, I think. He's not making sense. They're putting out hot air, a smoke screen, visions, such things as the longing for democracy, as if American G.I.s are going to bring democracy to anybody. They're disguising their real intent. We see it in their almost total inability ever to say that they do not intend to keep permanent bases, when you've seen the largest military bases, air bases with huge double runways, strategically located around the country. Never once do they say, that's not our intent. And the Air Force occasionally let slip that we expect to be there for at least a couple more decades.

But the American establishment, which certainly includes the Congressional and judicial establishment, has accepted the idea that we are the lone superpower, that we can do anything we want to. Although we've always been a superpower since World War II -- we've easily been the world's largest nation -- we didn't behave in that stupid manner. That's in part why I entitled my book Nemesis. She is the punisher of hubris and arrogance.

The public is on the receiving end, in terms of the declining jobs, the lower quality of life in America, and supplying the troops for the wars of choice that Bush and Condoleezza Rice have invented -- the public is beginning to get the idea. They understand it in a natural way.

That is one reason the military so much prefers the volunteer army, since 1973, as distinct from conscription. Conscription does mean a citizen army. You know why you're there. When I was in the Navy in the Korean War, it was an obligation of citizenship, it was not as it is today. Service today in our armed forces is a career choice, a decision about how to make your living. That alters things a great deal.

It makes it easier for the officers. Everybody who was ever in the armed forces knows that, with a citizen army, the people are very sensitive to whether the officers are lying, or whether they know what they're doing, whether the strategy makes any sense or not. There's a degree of fairness at work. The Vietnam war was certainly a working-class war. The total number of Yale graduates killed in Vietnam was one, and that is a fact.

So, yes, you could conceivably imagine a renaissance of public demand to take back the Congress, reconstitute it, reform it. Kick out the elites that serve vested interests. They're in both parties.

But I don't really expect that to happen. I think it's almost impossible to imagine mobilizing that kind of public, given the conglomerate control of the media in America, basically for purposes of advertising revenue.

At the same time, I am very much aware that the Internet is a new source of information. It's radically active. There are lots of people using it. And the public is alive. I've now published three books, this inadvertent trilogy. I notice a much more positive response to this last book, Nemesis, than to the first two, when you go into public to talk about it at the bookstore or at a university, or at a Democratic club. The people are worried to death about the way the country is going, the way it's governed, and above all, what they see as having happened. The political system has failed. We allowed it -- we lost oversight. If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, we have been anything but vigilant.

That's what Eisenhower warned us against. It's now here on our doorstep. We're close to the tipping point. And I don't really expect it to be reversed. But at the same time, that's precisely why you and I are talking to each other. We still do believe that there's a possibility of mobilizing inattentive citizens to reclaim the Congress and clean it up.

Karlin: You mentioned earlier that the CIA at one time cooperated with the mujahideen, and particularly Osama bin Laden.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: He was, in essence, an intelligence and military asset for the United States in its effort to wound the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: The effort was successful, in large part, because of a guerilla operation in which foreign fighters, including Osama bin Laden, who is from Saudi Arabia, fought on behalf of a Muslim nation against what was considered an imperial invader from the north -- Russia. And Russia finally withdrew.

Johnson: Right. What happened in Afghanistan contributed ultimately to the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Karlin: Exactly. It was one of the major dominos leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union as an empire. And it was imperial hubris which caused them to think they could subdue Afghanistan.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: Now my question is this: Is Iraq America's Afghanistan?

Johnson: It is perfectly possible that it will prove to be. Let me, just for once, give the Pentagon credit instead of criticizing it. I've always preferred their phrase "asymmetric warfare" for terrorism. Terrorism is a wrong word. It's a pejorative term. It's used to attack other people. We don't recognize the amount of terrorism we ourselves perpetuate, particularly from the air. But asymmetric warfare means the warfare of the poor, of the people who must rely upon ambushes and traps, and knowing their own country. That's what the Soviet Union ran into.

The fact that we are again repeating that -- you simply have to wonder whatever happened to Tony Blair? Is he an educated Englishman or not? Doesn't he know what happened to England in Afghanistan in the 19th Century, where the Afghans wiped them out? They would leave one single Englishman and send him back to the Khyber Pass to inform the army in India what had happened. We're back there again, and there's no doubt that we're going to be facing something very much like what the Soviet Union faced, in this coming summer.

It's absurd to listen to our people talk about how they had won the Afghan war. Basically what they did was to re-ignite the civil war by aiding the most corrupt figures in the country, namely the Northern Alliance of warlords, and provide them with airpower. It was anything but a victory, and I would hate to invest much in the Karzai regime for longevity.

So, yes, it is perfectly possible that we have come up against our genuine nemesis in the Middle East. We have created an economy totally dependent on oil. There's our insane belief that we can dominate the world through superior task forces, cruise missiles, and things of this sort. And we still claim that this is democracy.

The very idea -- we've seen the pictures of Americans kicking down the door of a private home, rushing in, usually walking all over Arabic rugs in their dirty boots, and pointing assault rifles at cowering women and children, carrying a few men off with their arms tied behind their back and hoods over their heads. Then we claim that this is bringing democracy to Iraq? We shouldn't be surprised that many Iraqis say it's okay to kill Americans.

That's what's going on in Iraq. We know we're going to lose it, just as we did in Vietnam. At least the public is sensing that, once again raising the hopes that democracy is not an insane form of government. The public may not be as well-informed as it ought to be, but it seems to be better informed than the elites in Washington, D.C.

Mark Karlin is the editor of buzzflash.com.
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New York City Asks Court Not to Unseal Police Spy Files

March 26, 2007

City Asks Court Not to Unseal Police Spy Files

By JIM DWYER
New York Times

Lawyers for the city, responding to a request to unseal records of police surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican convention in New York, say that the documents should remain secret because the news media will “fixate upon and sensationalize them,” hurting the city’s ability to defend itself in lawsuits over mass arrests.

In papers filed in federal court last week, the city’s lawyers also say that the documents could be “misinterpreted” because they were not intended for the public.

“The documents were not written for consumption by the general public,” wrote Peter Farrell, senior counsel in the city’s Law Department. “The documents contain information filtered and distilled for analysis by intelligence officers accustomed to reading intelligence information.”

Because the materials have not yet been used to decide or argue any issues in the civil lawsuits, Mr. Farrell said, “there is no right of public access.”

The documents show that the Police Department’s Intelligence Division sent undercover detectives around the city, the country and the world to collect information on political activists and others planning to demonstrate at the 2004 convention, according to a sampling of records reviewed by The New York Times that were the subject of an article yesterday. The records included intelligence digests and field reports from detectives, known as DD5s.

Those records showed that some of the surveillance was conducted on groups that planned to disrupt the convention, but the bulk of it was on groups and people who expressed no apparent intention to break the law. In at least some cases, the reports were shared with other law enforcement agencies.

Before monitoring political activity, the police must have some indication of wrongdoing, a federal court judge has said.

Yesterday a spokesman for the Police Department reiterated an earlier statement that the surveillance was conducted lawfully and that the preparations helped keep order when large crowds of demonstrators gathered in the city the week of the convention.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the revelations of widespread surveillance would increase pressure for the records’ release. “People all over the country will want these documents to see if they were spied upon,” he said. “That will make the debate about releasing them all the more important.”

In late January, the city turned over about 600 pages of intelligence digests to the civil liberties union and other lawyers suing the city on behalf of people who say they were wrongly arrested and detained during the convention. The documents are under court seal, but Mr. Dunn and a lawyer for The Times have asked a federal court magistrate to make them public.

City lawyers have described the intelligence documents as central to the city’s defense.

“They detail what information the N.Y.P.D. relied on in formulating its policies,” Gerald C. Smith, an assistant corporation counsel with the Law Department, wrote in a letter filed in federal court last month. He said the intelligence helped the police forecast how many people were coming to New York for the convention and had spoken about breaking the law.

Moreover, Mr. Smith wrote, the intelligence showed the city was justified in applying intensive scrutiny to the 1,806 people arrested during the convention, including fingerprinting more than a thousand people who faced charges no more serious than traffic tickets. Some were detained as long as two days for minor offenses.

“The decisions to adopt those policies were based in large part upon intelligence that had been gathered regarding the number of individuals planning to attend the R.N.C. in some capacity and the number of groups and individuals intending to, or at least professing to intend to, engage in unlawful behavior,” Mr. Smith wrote.

In ruling that some of that information could be used by the city for its defense, a federal magistrate judge said that a debate over security and First Amendment rights would come to a head in the litigation.

“The questions posed by these cases have great public significance,” the judge, James C. Francis IV of Federal District Court in Manhattan, wrote on March 12. “At issue is the proper relationship between the free speech rights of protesters and the means used by law enforcement officials to maintain public order.”

One group that learned it had been the subject of an intelligence report, Billionaires for Bush, offered a lighthearted response to the news. The group, a satirical troupe, dresses in tuxedos and gowns to provide faux endorsements of the administration.

Marco Ceglie, a national co-chairman who performs as Monet Oliver DePlace, said a member of the group known as Meg A. Buck had issued a statement: “We suspect they were looking for stock tips.”
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President Joseph Kabila: Order in DRC Had to be Restored at 'Any Cost'

Tuesday March 27, 5:52 AM

Order in DRCongo had to be restored at 'any cost': Kabila

AFP

Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila on Monday defended the use of force to quash what he described as an armed rebellion by militia loyal to former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba.

"Order had to be restored at any cost," Kabila said after deadly clashes last week in the capital Kinshasa that left 155 dead and 150 seriously wounded, according to a new toll from aid agency Caritas.

In his first statement since the fighting, the 35-year-old said that Bemba's fighters had been intent on seizing control of the capital, and that the dispute was military rather than political.

"You do not guarantee security through negotiation," he told reporters, in an apparent response to calls from the United Nations, the African Union and various countries for dialogue.

About 2,000 troops had fought Bemba's 700 fighters in the Gombe district of the capital on Thursday and Friday.

Bemba, who lost the landmark presidential election in October to Kabila, had refused to have his vice-presidential bodyguard integrated into the regular army, arguing that his personal security could not be guaranteed.

The former rebel leader took refuge in the South African embassy in Kinshasa on Thursday.

Kabila accused him of trying to put himself above the law. "It was totally unacceptable ... and the law has put him in his place," he added.

But he refused to say what would happen to his former vice-president, saying that a "judicial procedure" had been launched.

The government on Friday said that Bemba was being charged with high treason. Most of his fighters have fled or agreed to join government forces, but 107 took refuge at the United Nations mission here, the UN said.

Bemba for his part said he was prepared to go into exile if his security could not be guaranteed by Kinshasa.

In an interview with the Paris daily Le Monde he accused Kabila of wanting to "get rid" of him.

"We are at a turning point in our history, because if they continue to decapitate the opposition, a new dictatorship will be established," he said.

But Kabila denied any intention of making DR Congo a one-party state.

"I would be the last person to violate the constitution. Setting up a single party smacks of high treason," he said.

The MLC on Monday condemned what they called "threats" against Bemba and called for "acts of intimidation and arbitrary arrests of certain members and militants of the MLC as well as of peaceful citizens to end."

The party said it was "necessary and urgent for a political solution to the crisis to be found in order to preserve the still fragile democratic process in the country."

Kabila also dismissed out of hand speculation that his military had had a helping hand from foreign troops to subdue the opposition after witnesses said they had seen soldiers wearing Angolan uniforms during the fighting.

The United States on Monday said it condemned the violence, calling on leaders to respect peaceful democratic processes.

"This violence represents a setback in the progress the Congolese people expect and deserve after last year's historic elections," US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in a statement.

"The government will now have to show it can be responsible," a Western diplomat in Kinshasa said Sunday.

"If you are going to have a rule of law the opposition must be allowed to exist without being threatened or fearing a witch-hunt."

Kinshasa newspapers Monday welcomed the end of the conflict but expressed worries about the future of democracy in DR Congo, which last year saw its first democratic elections after decades of dictatorship, kleptocracy and war.

"We want peace, but this is not possible without everyone (working for it)," said Tshisuaka, an employee of a security company in Kinshasa.

"The important thing is to see people getting back on with things after such awful scenes," he said.
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Dark Days in Benton Harbor: An Analysis of the Pinkney Trial and the Movement Ahead

MikeNOC@aol.com

Analysis of Pinkney Trial and the Movement Ahead

On March 21, 2007 (when day and night are equal), justice in Berrien County, Michigan took a big step backwards into the darkness of fear and bigotry when an all-white jury convicted a black community activist, Reverend Edward Pinkney, of five counts of improprieties in connection with a 2005 recall election involving the City of Benton Harbor's most powerful commissioner.

The facts and the history are stark. Benton Harbor is ninety-four percent (94%) black, ninety percent (90%) poor and seventy percent (70%) unemployed. It is directly across the river from affluent and practically all-white St. Joseph, Michigan, the world headquarters of the Whirlpool Corporation. Benton Harbor is still the largest city in the county and was once the site of most of the county's governmental functions, including the Federal building. But, as industrial stagnation and flight increasingly gripped the area and the St. Joseph/Lake Michigan coastline was increasingly dominated by the tourist economy, Benton Harbor has been systematically drained of any economic vitality. Its citizens are unwelcome in other parts of the county and the criminal justice system operates to arrest, imprison, intimidate, control and marginalize them. Benton Harbor's governmental and educational institutions are characterized by infighting and petty corruption.

The City festered in that condition until the summer of 2003, when the police killing of a young black man erupted into a short and destructive outburst of rebellious anger. Pinkney helped keep the peace. Public officials poured in to deplore Benton Harbor's conditions and promised that something would be done. Nothing was. Progressive and radical organizations also went to Benton Harbor and linked up with the local community.

The Reverend Edward Pinkney, working in cooperation with his wife, Dorothy, had affiliated with BANCO (Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizations) and had meetings in Benton Harbor. By the time of the 2003 rebellion, Pinkney was publicly identified as the leader of the disadvantaged and dissident community in Benton Harbor, based in large part on his daily presence at the Berrien County courthouse. He exposed what he saw as the inherent racism of the criminal justice system and the willful inadequacy of the defense provided to the poor (mostly) black defendants. Pinkney picketed the courthouse and the local newspaper, openly naming individuals he believed to be involved in corrupt and racist practices.

In the fall of 2003, in a notorious incident, the Benton Harbor Chief of Police (who was not a certified law enforcement officer or licensed to carry a gun), fired into the air in order to disperse a group of black youths who had gathered on a corner. Despite the fact that both the possession and the use of the gun were illegal under state and local law, nothing was done. Pinkney led protests. The primary protector of the Police Chief was a City Commissioner named Glen Yarbrough, who was and is the most powerful political figure in Benton Harbor.

Although the transition of Berrien County from an industrial to a tourist, real estate and service-based economy increasingly isolated Benton Harbor, it sits on some very valuable real estate on the St. Joseph River. In 2003-2004, the former CEO of Whirlpool began advocating a development plan for what was projected to become a five hundred million dollar ($500,000,000) marina/residential/golf course complex, which would take four hundred sixty five (465) acres of Benton Harbor. It would take the City's only beach and the City would be paid less than a million dollars ($1,000,000) for the property. Ultimately, it is projected that the land will be detached from the City and put in the more-white adjoining township. BANCO and Pinkney opposed this development because it would do nothing for the poor and permanently deprive the City of some of its potentially greatest assets. Commissioner Yarbrough was the key local politician supporting the plan.

In the fall of 2004, Pinkney and BANCO circulated recall petitions for Yarbrough, using his failure to discipline the Police Chief as the reason. Once the recall election was put on the ballot for February 2005, Pinkney used his grassroots and BANCO network to get out the absentee vote. He knew that, with his limited resources, he could never hope to compete with the Yarbrough "machine" on Election Day.

Pinkney was successful. There was a forty-two percent (42%) absentee voter rate and Yarbrough lost the recall by fifty-four (54) votes.

Yarbrough immediately swung into action. He went to the County Clerk complaining about the absentee votes. She referred him to the Prosecutor, who personally called the Sheriff to have an investigation opened. Within days, Yarbrough had "found" a young man named Mancel Williams, who alleged that Pinkney paid him $5.00 to vote for the recall. A week later the same Mancel Williams went to City Commissioner Etta Harper and made a tape recording, indicating that Yarbrough had paid him $10.00 to claim that Pinkney had paid him $5.00. The tape was turned over to Mayor Wilce Cook, who turned it over to the Benton Harbor Police. Nothing happened. The County Sheriff's investigation did not mention it. Mancel Williams is in prison on another charge and has refused to testify for either side, fearing retaliation by the police and prosecutor.

Brenda Fox, a drug-user and prostitute whom Pinkney had helped in the past, was interviewed by the police, who were working off the absentee voter list. The day before the election, she had volunteered to go to the local soup kitchen and recruit 10-15 people for $5.00 each to pass out leaflets about the election the next day. It turned out that a number of the clients of the soup kitchen were registered to vote and wanted to do so. They went to the Clerk's Office, got absentee ballots and voted. Brenda Fox, under pressure, claimed that Pinkney had told her to pay them $5.00 to vote against Yarbrough and make sure that they did so. She was given immunity from prosecution. None of the people who supposedly got paid to vote admitted it or testified against Pinkney. A number of witnesses denied the $5-a-vote claim by Brenda Fox, supporting Pinkney. They passed out fliers.

But Brenda Fox's most important task was to testify in the lawsuit filed by the Prosecutor against the City Clerk to set aside the recall. The City refused to defend her. Although there was not enough evidence to invalidate 54 votes, a local judge, now nominated by George Bush to the Federal bench in Western Michigan, ordered a new election.

The clerk lost her job. The next day the Prosecutor arrested Pinkney for voter fraud and hit him with a $100,000 bond. Although Pinkney's bond was reduced and he was later released, Yarbrough was reinstated to the Commission in the second recall election. Obviously Pinkney, facing charges and with his supporters intimidated, still campaigned valiantly but was unable to overcome the resources poured in by the local establishment. The vote was down and Yarbrough won by 40.

For three days after she testified in the election lawsuit, Brenda Fox holed up in her apartment sending people out for drugs and alcohol, indicating that the money came from testifying against Pinkney. She told one witness, Douglas Bragg, that he was the only one not getting paid to testify against Pinkney. A year later, Bragg saw her get picked up for prostitution by the Benton Harbor Police and then dropped off 20 minutes later. She said that she did not have to worry about the police as long as she was testifying against Pinkney. The Judge refused to let most of that evidence into the trial.

In Pinkney's most recent trial, Brenda Fox, under questioning by one of Pinkney's lawyers, Elliott Hall (former counsel to the Detroit NAACP, Vice-President of Ford Motor Company and Chief Assistant of Wayne County Prosecutor), broke down completely on the stand, began crying and could not go on. She was described by Hugh [Buck] Davis (a veteran civil rights lawyer) as incredible as any witness he had seen in 38 years. Davis told the jury in closing argument "You couldn't send a dog to the pound on the testimony of Brenda Fox."

Nevertheless, the all white jury convicted Pinkney of paying for and influencing votes through Brenda Fox, shocking the audience and arguably surprising even the Prosecutor. When the jury convicted Pinkney on the false vote counts based on the testimony of Brenda Fox, Davis commented that the willingness of the jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt relying on her testimony was an indication that they violated the sanctity of their oath and were motivated by something other than the pursuit of truth and justice.

But the most dangerous charges against Pinkney did not concern corruptly buying or influencing votes, but simply inadvertently having possession of an absentee ballot (voted or unvoted) of a person who was not a family member or a member of his immediate household. The Michigan Legislature passed that new law in 1995. In essence, it is a "gotcha" law. The mere allegation that an individual handled an absentee ballot (even with no bad intent or evidence of tampering) is a five (5) year felony. The Prosecutor brought three (3) such charges against Pinkney, giving the jury the option of eight (8) different voters who claimed they turned their ballots over to Pinkney.

Pinkney admitted that he gave those voters stamps and address labels to mail their ballots, but did not handle them. He knew that they were so poor that they might not have postage. The Prosecutor admitted that Pinkney gave them the stamps. The defense asked, "If Pinkney was going to take the ballots, why give them stamps?"

In the first trial in March 2006, Tat Parish (an able and progressive Berrien County attorney) represented Pinkney. There were two (2) blacks on the jury. The jury hung on all five (5) counts.

Given the fact that the Prosecutor had already set aside the election, gotten Yarbrough back in office and gotten rid of a City Clerk believed to be friendly to Pinkney, they might have been satisfied. But Pinkney's militance and outspoken opposition to the administration in Benton Harbor and to the proposed "Harbor Shores" development required that he be distracted by having to continue to defend himself and, if possible, removed as a leader.

Defense attorneys, Hall and Davis, long associates in civil rights cases in Detroit, volunteered for the second trial as a National Lawyers Guild project. Pinkney inspired substantial publicity and support, particularly in Michigan, but also nationally. Timothy Holloway (an appellate specialist) also volunteered and wrote a motion and brief attacking the "possession of an absentee ballot" statue on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to create a strict liability felony where the act itself is only handling someone's ballot without tampering and without knowledge or bad intent. The Judge denied the motion. Pinkney attempted to appeal before trial. The Court of Appeals would not hear the case. It is now one of the major issues on appeal.

Secondarily, Pinkney had complained for years about the systematic exclusion and under-representation of black jurors in the Berrien County court system. Pinkney, several of his courthouse observers and his original attorney filed affidavits indicating that out of an average panel of potential jurors, rarely were more than 2 or 3 minorities among them (3-5%). Frequently, there were none.

Berrien County is 15.5% black. The statistical disparity is constitutionally significant and presents a case for systematic racial exclusion, whether intentional or not. Wayne Bentley, a Jury Commissioner in Kent County (Grand Rapids, Michigan) who has helped reform the jury system there, agreed to act as an expert. Approximately 100,000 jury questionnaires from the last three years were obtained and an evidentiary hearing was held the week before the trial. There, Bentley explained the ways in which the jury system resulted in the systematic under representation of minorities:

1. Failure to use up-to-date address lists (statistically, poor and black people in Benton Harbor move more);
2. Failure to send follow-up letters for undelivered or unreturned questionnaires;
3. Failure to follow-up on summonses to appear for jury duty;
4. Treating anyone with a temporary medical problem or with a handicap as permanently disqualified (the medical problem/ handicap rate in Benton Harbor is 47%);
5. Treating one-time absentee voters as permanent exemptions.

The Clerk testified without any documentation, that approximately 6 out of every 45 potential jurors in the pools were black, bringing the percentage to a constitutionally permissible 12-13 percent. In fact, she testified that there were 6 blacks in the jury pool called for that very day, March 6, 2007. Unfortunately for the Clerk, Pinkney's court-watchers were in the hall when that panel was escorted to another courtroom. There were indeed 45 potential jurors, but only 2 of them were black (4%). Their affidavits were filed with Pinkney's Judge, alleging perjury by the Clerk. He ignored them. He denied the jury challenge on the first day of the trial, but by the end of the trial had not issued a written opinion. That will be another basis for the appeal.

When Pinkney's second jury turned out to be all white, there was some hope that the liberal sentiments of the white community to defend the rights of minorities could be aroused. But the jury was clearly intimidated by the large numbers of Pinkney supporters in the courtroom and around the courthouse, most of them obviously poor. A posting to the BANCO website from a supporter was monitored by the authorities. The e-mailer regretted that he had been out of town during the first part of the trial and commented that the white judge and prosecutor would eventually "go down." It was treated as a threat and turned over to the police.

Midway through the trial, the Judge locked the courtroom to spectators, who could only come in before the session began or on break. A juror reported that she thought she had seen an illegal transaction take place in the parking lot between one of Pinkney's lawyers and one of his witnesses and supporters (the lawyer gave him a cigarette). Security was increasingly beefed up. The jury wanted to make sure that Pinkney's lawyers did not have their jury questionnaires. They were returned before the verdict.

The effect of all of the above was to make the jury even more afraid and suspicious of blacks in Benton Harbor in general and of Pinkney and his supporters in particular. Their reaction was to retreat into the sort of blind desire to uphold the system as in the South, where a black man's word meant nothing, regardless of how obviously false and fabricated the evidence against him.

But it should also be pointed out that these jurors were ordinary working class and middle class whites, themselves on the edge of economic insecurity. As the economy of Berrien County continues to decline, they needed to believe that what has happened to Benton Harbor will not happen to them. They needed to believe that what is good for Whirlpool is good for them. They needed to believe that somehow the "Harbor Shores" development for rich people from somewhere else will be good for them. They failed to understand that they are one layoff, one injury or one illness from needing the same social services as the people in Benton Harbor. They failed to understand that the campaign for universal health care, education, productive jobs, limited development, protection of the environment, etc., can only be achieved when they unite around the protection of the poorest and most dispossessed, as opposed to running away from the obvious horror of life in Benton Harbor.

Pinkney's sentencing is May 14, 2007 at 1:30 p.m. Between now and then, all fair-minded individuals, particularly those who have had the privilege to meet Reverend Pinkney or follow his work, should write letters of support. THEY SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO: The Honorable Alfred M. Butzbaugh, Berrien County Circuit Court, 811 Port Street, St. Joseph, Michigan, 49085-1187, regarding the case of People v. Reverend Edward Pinkney.

BUT THEY SHOULD BE SENT TO: Hugh M. Davis, Constitutional Litigation Associates, P.C., 450 West Fort Street, Suite 450, Detroit, Michigan, 48226. Phone: 313-961-2255; Fax: 313-961-5999; email: conlitpc@sbcglobal.net .

The purpose of the letter is not to accuse the Judge, the Prosecutor or even the jury of being racist, but rather to point out how distressing and suspicious it is that an all white jury would sit in judgment of a black community activist, 50 years after the high point of the civil rights movement. Also, emphasize the nature of Reverend Pinkney's work, how important it is that we have dissident voices in every community and that free speech must be protected. The letters should also indicate that, no matter what view one takes of the evidence against Pinkney, the worst that he did was innocently handle some ballots and become the victim of the testimony of some very shady characters, particularly including Brenda Fox. Tell the Judge that prison is NOT the place for a person like Pinkney, but that he is needed in the community, whether one agrees with him or not. Tell the Judge that the prisons are already filled up with too many black men and are already too much of a drain on the state and local economies. Tell the Judge that prison should be reserved for only dangerous and violent individuals who have to be removed from society. That is clearly not Reverend Pinkney.

Finally, everyone should personalize their letter and, if you have any direct experience with Reverend Pinkney, describe it – what he did, how he helped, what you saw and whether he got any personal gain out of it.

The last important issue is bond pending appeal. Pinkney's attorneys intend to push hard on the validity of the statute and on the denial of the jury challenge. Those efforts could take years. Let the Judge know that you believe that Reverend Pinkney should not be required to serve a sentence, even a short one, when these serious issues are still undecided on appeal. Since it is the Judge himself whose decisions are being challenged, he should not presume the outcome by refusing Pinkney bond.
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Monday, March 26, 2007

Somali Update: Liberation Front Calls For Volunteers; Uganda To Review Presence; NJ Man Held By US-backed Occupationists

Somali fighters call for volunteers

The video given to Al Jazeera showed members of the Somali Liberation Front preparing to carry out attacks

The Somali Liberation Front, an otherwise unknown group, have called on Arabs and Muslims to come to Somalia to fight Ethiopian troops.

Speaking in a videotape aired by Al Jazeera on Wednesday, the group's spokesman also said that its fighters had begun a guerrilla campaign against the Somali government.

"We call on the Arab and Muslim countries to adhere to their responsibilities towards Somalis and to stand by their brethrens in their efforts to liberate their country," the Somali spokesman said, speaking halting Arabic with his face concealed.

The short video also showed armed men making plans and training to carry out attacks.

The group's self-proclaimed spokesman also said that the African Union should not send troops to support the Ethiopian military which has deployed in Somalia to support the countrys' weak interim government.

"We call on the African countries to refrain from sending troops to Somalia, as by doing this they legalize the Ethiopian occupation, harm the Somali issue and get themselves involved in a dispensable trouble," he said.

Cargo plane 'shot down'

Separately, the government of Belarus said that a privately-owned Belorussian cargo plane that crashed north of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, on Friday, had been shot down.

"The plane was shot down," Kseniya Perestoronina, a transport ministry spokeswoman said in Minsk, the Belorussian capital.

She said that the large Ilyushin-76 aircraft, in Somalia to assist struggling African peacekeepers, was hit at a height of 150 metres and that all eleven passengers and crew had died in the crash.

The statement appeared to confirm initial reports from both a local Somali radio station and an Islamist web site that a missile had hit the Russian-made aircraft just after takeoff from Mogadishu on Friday afternoon.

However Mohamed Mahamud Guled, Somalia's interior minister, said that although investigations were continuing, the crash was due to a technical fault.

"The plane took off at around five o'clock and as soon as it reached 10,000 feet altitude, the pilot reported an engine problem in engine number two and said he would turn back to the airport," he told a news conference in Mogadishu.

The plane had brought a team to fix another Ilyushin lying damaged at Mogadishu airport after flying in peacekeepers.

That plane caught fire on the runway in an incident the AU said was a technical fault, but Islamists said was a missile attack.

Source: Al Jazeera


Somalia: Ethiopians warned to leave Somalia immediately

Sun. March 25, 2007 05:43 pm
By Mohamed Abdi Farah

(SomaliNet) After having intensive meeting in the north of the Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, elders of Hawiye tribe, one of the four main tribes in Somalia, Sunday issued a communiqué over their position towards the best way to find solution for the crisis in the capital which has been stable for the second day.

The Hawiye elders agreed on late today several articles including to fully comply with the ceasefire deal they signed with the Ethiopian military officials, as Abdi Imam Omar, among the elders told the reporters.

The elders representing the Hawiye tribe said in their statements that they are suggesting the world community to provide support the ceasefire agreement and help it implemented and giving consideration to the human crisis in the capital that resulted from the latest clashes.

They called on the Somali people in Mogadishu not to give respect to the government’s warning that residents desert the targeted places but remain in the city.

The Ethiopian government should immediately pull its troops out of our country as it had already pledged to quit Somalia after the arrival of the African Union peacekeepers, the statement said.

The elders said Puntland militia should be withdrawn from Mogadishu and brought back to their home until a national government is formed.

The Hawiye chiefs agreed to release all the prisoners captured in the recent clashes in the capital saying what they called ‘the misled soldiers will be handed to their clans.

They made it clear that Hawiye is ready to fully participate the coming national conference in the capital on 16 April after the implementation of the ceasefire and appealed the Hawiye people within the interim government to come before the elders to them into accountability for the responsibility they are holding for the their constituencies.

The elders asked for all Somali people wherever they are to intensely attend in defending the religion and the country against the enemy.


Ugandan troops say they are being used as guinea pigs

By BARBARA AMONG
Special Correspondent

The Ugandan government is reviewing its involvement in Somalia as its troops await the arrival of peacekeepers from other African countries.

“We are assessing the situation on the ground and the magnitude of the assignment before the government decides on the way forward,” Isaac Musumba, the State Minister for Regional Co-operation, said.

He added that he had not received any communication from the African Union regarding when the peacekeepers promised by other African countries would join the Ugandan troops.

Meanwhile, a Ugandan captain in Somalia, who asked not to be identified, said the countries that had promised to send troops were not ready to take the lead. “True, many have pledged to join us, but they are waiting for us to test the waters first,” he said, adding that the situation was complicated by the presence of terrorists and the warfare tactics adopted by the Islamists.

Uganda is the first African country to deploy troops to the war-torn country under the aegis of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). The 1,500 Ugandans were to be joined by 1,700 troops from Burundi in April, 850 troops each from Nigeria and Malawi in May and 300 troops from Ghana.

However, it seems like the additional troops will arrive much later than that.

Burundi says it lacks equipment for the mission while Nigeria, Ghana and Malawi have yet to deploy their troops.

And Sudan, one of the first African countries to offer to intervene in Somalia, says its statement was misunderstood.

“Sudan has never said it will send troops to Somalia. We offered to facilitate dialogue in that country and we still stand by that,” the Sudanese ambassador to Uganda, Hassan Ibrahim Gadkarim, said.

Besides, troops have to undergo special training before being deployed.

During a press conference in Mogadishu last week, the commander of the Ugandan troops, Maj-Gen Levi Karuhanga, appealed to the AU to push other African countries to keep their promise.

The AU’s Commissioner for Peace and Security, Said Djinnit, appealed for financial and logistical help, saying the mission faced the greatest challenges in these two areas.

The shortage of peacekeepers is aggravated by outright opposition to the peacekeeping effort by some countries. Eritrea, for instance, has repeatedly called for the withdrawal of Ugandan troops.

The AU mission was authorised by the UN to help the new Somali government find its footing, but its effectiveness is already in doubt due to foot-dragging by states that had promised to help.

Non-AU members have also pledged help: France will equip Burundian troops while the EU will give 15 million euros ($19,500,000) for refunding expenses incurred by Uganda. Britain and the US have pledged 6 million ($7,800,000) and 11 million ($14,300000) euros respectively.

The AU plans to send 8,000 troops to Somalia, but only half that number are on the ground and cannot make much of an impact.

The AU’s “White Helmets”, as the peacekeepers are known, are expected to provide security and help maintain stability in a country that has been at war for more than 15 years. Already, they have already been attacked by insurgents who had vowed to target the peacekeeping forces.

Two Ugandans have been injured and flown back to Kampala while an Ethiopian and a Somali working alongside Ugandan troops were killed and their bodies dragged through the streets.

The peacekeepers will remain in Somalia for six months, after which Amisom will evolve into a United Nation’s operation.


N.J. man being held as prisoner in Ethiopia

Sunday, March 25, 2007
ASSOCIATED PRESS

TINTON FALLS -- The parents of a New Jersey man being held in an Ethiopian prison for allegedly fighting on the side of radical Islamists in neighboring Somalia say he's innocent and want the U.S. government to win his release.

Amir Mohamed Meshal, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen and community college dropout, went to Somalia last year to help build an Islamic state there. But when Ethiopian forces last December invaded Somalia to topple the Islamic government -- with tacit U.S. government backing -- Meshal and thousands of others fled to neighboring Kenya.

He was eventually taken into custody by Kenyan officials, and sent back to Somalia and later Ethiopia -- where he could be considered a prisoner of war for allegedly fighting for radical Islamists in neighboring Somalia.

Meshal's father, a computer engineer who is also named Mohamed, said his son had nothing to do with the Islamic fighters -- some of whom the United States have said are connected to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

"He's naive," Meshal's father told The New York Times for Saturday's newspapers. "His ambition is maybe he just wants to go there to pick up a wife and settle down. He has nothing against the U.S."

The U.S. government seems to agree. American authorities say that before Meshal was deported from Kenya, they had determined he did not fight for the Somali Islamists, and had requested that he not be deported to any country except the United States.

The State Department says Meshal was held for nearly a month in a jail in the Ethiopian capital before U.S. diplomats were able to see him on Wednesday. Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said a formal complaint had been made to the government of Kenya over the deportation.

Meshal's parents say the U.S. government hasn't done enough.

Another U.S. citizen who fled Somalia around the same time, Daniel Joseph Maldonado, was accused of al-Qaida affiliation and deported from Kenya to Houston, where he faces terrorism charges.

When asked if their son was involved with Maldonado, Meshal's said, "I'd like to get my son 10 million miles away from Maldonado."
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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Zimbabwe Targeted In Western Attacks On Countries With Independent Policies

Zimbabwe Targeted In Western Attacks on Countries With Independent Domestic and Foreign Policies

Neo-colonial designs are behind corporate media offensive

By Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor
Pan-African News Wire

News Analysis--During the month of March 2007, a new wave of propaganda, diplomatic and media attacks against the southern African nation of Zimbabwe were launched.

These biased news reports on Zimbabwe are not new. They extend back to the period of the national liberation struggle to free the country from the settler-colonial regime of Ian Smith during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), the two organizations that lead the movement for independence, were never viewed favorably by the mainstream media outlets in the United States and Europe.

This tradition of hostility is continuing today and is clearly reflected in a series of distorted reports that have been issued by the Cable News Network (CNN) and other media outlets that essentially parrot what is deemed as the correct perspective on political developments in Zimbabwe. These attacks against Zimbabwe are occuring simultaneously with a whole campaign against various geo-political regions throughout the international community.

It also important to keep in mind that these propaganda and diplomatic offenses against nations such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Zimbabwe are taking place at the same time that both the American and British administrations are suffering substantial losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, thrawting its imperial aims that starkly stand behind the so-called "war on terrorism."

During the month of March, the African continent and the Diaspora celebrated the 50th anniversary of the independence of Ghana in 1957 under the leadership of the Convention People's Party headed by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. What was not normally discussed in the articles written on the Ghana's independence process was the fact that Nkrumah's government was consistently undermined by the United States State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

On February 24, 1966, a military and police coup was carried out while President Nkrumah was in route to China and Vietnam on a peace mission involving the American war of occupation against Vietnam. The coup against Nkrumah was one action of subversion that followed a similar pattern that had taken place in Guatamala in 1954, in Iran in 1953, in Cuba in 1961 and 1962, in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and in Indonesia that same year.

All of these coups were preceeded by massive disinformation campaigns which sought to influence public opinion both inside and outside the nation's that were targeted.

In Zimbabwe, the government led by President Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF Party, has sought to re-correct the historical injustice of settler-colonialism in southern Africa.

The country was colonized by the British during the latter part of the 19th century, where the land occupied by the African people was stolen by the imperialist forces, personified by Cecil Rhodes and his collaborators, and distributed to the British.

The mineral resources and agricultural wealth of the nation was exported to Europe and the political control of all dominant institutions in the society were controlled by the British colonialists. It was only the national liberation movement, that was forced to take up arms against the settler-colonialists, that brought indepenence to Zimbabwe.

Consequently, today the western corporate media speaks of Zimbabwe as a tragedy of economic and political mismanagement that stems from the rule of the African people over this resource-rich nation.

Yet since its independence in 1980, both the United Kingdom and the United States have failed to provide the type of assistance that could have resolved the land question in Zimbabwe in a less contentious manner. The revolution in the country was fought over the need for Africans to regain control of the land and natural resources of the country.

Therefore, when the ZANU-PF government announced in 1998 that it would embark upon a serious land redistribution program, the country became a target of the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. It is the failure of the west to recognize the sovereignty of Zimbabwe that is at the root cause of the current economic and social problems that exist in the country today.

The western imperialist nations have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe since 1998. They have discouraged investment and attempted to persuade the neighboring nation of South Africa to institute an economic blockade of the country.

However, the African National Congress led government in South Africa has refused to follow the line of the US, EU and UK towards Zimbabwe, continuing to state that the problems inside the independent African nation must be resolved through dialogue among the people themselves.

It is the actions of South Africa along with the new economic orientation towards other independent African states, Asian and Latin American nations that has kept the country afloat amid this intense campaign by the imperialist nations to force right-wing political change in Zimbabwe.

Since 2000, when liberation movement war veterans moved on to farms controlled by a small minority of white settlers, the corporate controlled media in the United States and other western nations have set out to denigrate every political move made by the ruling ZANU-PF Party.

There have been several national and local elections held in Zimbabwe since 2000, all of which have been monitored and observed by teams from the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the European Union, the Commonwealth, the African Union, the United States and other national and international institutions.

Despite this strict scrutiny of the Zimbabwean political process, the western media outlets as well as their diplomatic missions, have continued to describe the system inside the country as far less than democratic.

In light of the 50th anniversary of the independence of Ghana, which ushered in the modern period of ostensibly autonomous African states, it is important to review some aspects of what happened to the political experiment in Ghana, and why it has important lessons for what the Americans, British and the European Union are currently doing to undermine, destabilize and isolate the Zimbabwean government.

This program of villification and condemnation of the Zimbabwe government was also carried out against the Convention People's Party in Ghana during the 1960s. It was the west and its allies who created the illusion that Ghana was in deep economic and political crisis at a time when the African country was hailed around the continent and the world as a leading force in the national liberation and non-aligned movements.

The Global Strategy of Western Imperialism

Nkrumah in his book entitled: "The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare", published in 1968, he initially points out that it is important for the peoples of Africa to know who their enemies are and what imperialism is actively seeking to achieve.

According to Nkrumah:
"A number of external factors affect the African situation, and if our liberation struggle is to be placed in correct perspective and we are to KNOW THE ENEMY, the impact of these factors must be fully grasped. First among them is imperialism, for it is mainly against exploitation and poverty that our peoples revolt. It is therefore of paramount importance to set out the strategy of imperialism in clear terms:

"1. The means used by the enemy to ensure the continued economic exploitation of our territories.
2. The nature of the attempts made to destroy the liberation movement.

"Once the components of the enemy's strategy are determined, we will be in a position to outline the correct strategy for our own struggle in terms of our actual situation and in accordance with our objectives."

The objectives of the imperialist powers of course are to dominate the land and resources of the majority of the peoples and nations of the world. This global domination reinforces the internal capitalist exploitation of the working and poor classes in the industrial nations.

Since the collapse of the so-called welfare state, which arose during the great depression of the 1930s and 1940s and the social programs instituted in response to this crisis, coupled with the expanded base of imperialist exploitation after the conclusion of World War II, in the present period since the 1980s, the imperialist states led by the US, have moved towards the institutionalization of a national security warfare state, where the social programs instituted to ameliorate the extreme effects of capitalism can no longer be afforded.

This unquenchable hunger for ever increasing rates of profit does not leave much for the reinvestment into the health, housing, food, educational and cultural needs of the masses both within the industrialized nations and the former colonial and semi-colonial territories.

When nations seek to embark upon an independent course and consequently challenge the imperialist states, they are always subjected to destabilization campaigns which can ultimately lead to military actions to effect "regime change."

In Ghana, it was the notion that the country could not continue under the leadership of the CPP, that provided the rationale for the removal of the Nkrumah government. This propaganda, media, diplomatic and military offensive is always funded by the imperialist states.

In Ghana, it was the political forces opposed to Nkrumah's pan-africanist and socialist ideals that collaborated with the multi-national corporations and the western intelligence agencies to undermine a state which sought to pursue an genuinely independent course.

Nkrumah in his book entitled: "Dark Days in Ghana", published in 1968, he states that:
"An all-out offensive is being waged against the progressive, indpendent states. Where the more subtle methods of economic pressure and political subversion have failed to achieve the desired result, there has been resort to violence in order to promote a change of regime and prepare the way for the establishment of a puppet government.

"Fragmented into so many separate states, many of them weak and economically non-viable, coup d'etats have been relatively easy to arrange in Africa. All that has been needed was a small force of disciplined men to seize the key points of the capital city and to arrest the existing political leadership. In the planning and carrying out of these coups there have always been just sufficient numbers of dissatisfied and ambitious army officers and politicians willing to co-operate to make the whole operation possible.

"It has been one of the tasks of the C.I.A. and other similar organisations to discover these potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries. In Ghana the embassies of the United States, Britain, and West Germany were all implicated in the plot to overthrow my government.

"It is alleged that the U.S. Ambassador, Franklin Williams, offered the traitors 13 million dollars to carry out a coup d'etat. Afrifa, Harlley and Kotoka (the coup leaders in Ghana) were to get a large share of this if they would assassinate me at Accra airport as I prepared to leave for Hanoi. I understand Afrifa said: 'I think I will fail', and declined the offer. So apparently did the others."

Lessons for Zimbabwe Today

What Nkrumah described in 1968 in relationship to political events in Ghana leading up to the reactionary coup of 1966, portends much for develops in Zimbabwe and other countries in the recent period. The so-called Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is the fragmented opposition to President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government, has no program other than regime change inside the country.

The party has been financed and encouraged by the United States, Britain and the European Union and has done everything in its power to not only demand stronger sanctions against their own nation, but have sought to destabilize the country.

Violent acts carried out by the MDC and its suporters are encouraged and then overlooked while every effort by the ZANU-PF government to maintain order and to work towards the economic development of Zimbabwe is denounced by both the diplomatic corps of the imperialist nations as well as the corporate media outlets.

In a recent wave of reports related to the arrests of several opposition leaders in Zimbabwe, it was never mentioned that these figures already have political representation in the parliament.

In addition, it was not noted that no leading opposition figure has remained in prison for the many crimes committed against the people of Zimbabwe and their government.

All governments are elected to protect the interests of the state and its people, yet the corporate media reports on Zimbabwe seek to portray all efforts aimed at the national security of Zimbabwe as being illegitimate.

One of the key players in this process is the Atlanta-based Cable News Network (CNN) through its reporter Jeff Koinange. Koinange, who apparently has never seen an independently-minded African government that he liked, has been sent to both Sudan and now southern Africa to provide a rationale for further western destabilization of African states that are not supported by the United States and other imperialist nations.

In regard to the Sudan, the Americans and the British have portrayed the situation in Darfur as genocide that requires military intervention at the aegis of the imperialist nations. What is not mentioned is the fact that Sudan is an oil-rich nation, whose resources are coveted by the US, the EU and the UK.

In relationship to Zimbabwe, Koinange has been reporting from South Africa, where he has taken select comments from Zimbabwean in exile and anti-Zimbabwe elements among the population, to create an image of the necessity of regime change.

Koinange's reports claim that Zimbabwe was once considered the "breadbasket" of Africa but is today the "basketcase of Africa." Yet when was Zimbabwe the breadbasket of Africa? Was this under the settler-colonial regime of Ian Smith and the other political descendants of Cecil Rhodes and the colonialists. Can the people consume tobacco, the largest cash crop in the country under the previous white farming system?

In other words, according to the CNN logic, it was under colonial and the slave conditions of institutional racism and white domination that the African nation flourished. And flourished for whom? Apparently the European imperialists and their allies who profited from the free labor and land stolen from the African working masses and farmers who produced the wealth of the country.

Perhaps the most outrageous statement made during the recent CNN propaganda campaign against Zimbabwe, was uttered by Miles O'Brien, an anchor person based in Atlanta. After making remarks regarding the fact that President Mugabe would probably win the national elections in 2008 if he is selected to run by the ruling ZANU-PF Party, O'Brien said that: "Well they (meaning the African people of Zimbabwe) don't have elections like us," implying that the elections were not free and fair.

Koinange, who was supposedly reporting on the situation in Zimbabwe from outside the country, made comments to suggest that the elections in Zimbabwe were not credible.

However, most people in the world, including the United States know that the elections that brought the current administration of George W. Bush to power were stolen. That hundreds of thousands of votes were not counted. That thousands of African-Americans and Latinos were prevented through police checkpoints from reaching the polls in Florida during November of 2000.

Others have observed that the "re-election" of Bush in November of 2004 was also marked by fraud and corruption utilizing rigged electronic voting machines in Ohio and other states. This was a process that culminated a vast right-wing propaganda campaign of deception: utilizing racism, sexism and religious bigotry.

What was not mentioned in relationship to the elections in Zimbabwe since 2000, is that they have all been monitored by various international groups and delegations. No such assertion can be made in regard to elections held in the United States.

As a result of the advent of the Bush administration, the country has been driven into a false so-called "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and Somalia.

The wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan are all but loss by the United States and Britain. They have suffered tens of thousands of casualties at the hands of the resistance forces in these nations.

In Iraq there have been over 3,200 officially reported deaths of American soldiers, although many people within the anti-war movement believe these figures are much higher when considering those who perish off the battlefield during treatment in Germany and inside the United States.

It has been recognized by many establishment elements in the US and UK that over 50,000 of their soldiers have been wounded and that over 200,000 have suffered internal brain injuries.

In addition, over 200,000 will suffer the rest of their lives from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of being manipulated into fighting an unjust war against peoples who have commited no crimes against the citizens and residents of the United States.

Moreover, anywhere between 655,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US/UK invasion and occupation of this middle-eastern nation since March 19, 2003.

In Afghanistan figures are much more difficult to come by, but it is obvious that the resistance to US/NATO occupation among the population is intensifying after over five years of aggressive action and counter-insurgency operations by these imperialist nations and their allies.

Where is the outcry from CNN and other corporate media outlets over the western-engineered mass slaughter of the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan in wars that cannot be won by the imperialist nations?

And what of the detrimental impact of the so-called "war on terrorism" on the people of the United States? In the US today there are massive attacks on the social programs that grew out of the struggles of the labor and civil rights movements of the last seven decades.

Healthcare, pensions and other social programs are being eliminated while wages are decreasing and more and more African-Americans and Latinos youth are being locked away in prisons.

Since there is no future for these youth outside of unemployment, crime, low wage dead-end employment and the criminal justice system, they are being encouraged to join the militlary as a way out of poverty and economic stagnation.

Consequently, in order to make it in today's American society youth are being recruited by the military to go and fight wars of aggression against other peoples of color who are striving for their own national liberation and sovereignty.

In such a political scenario it is not surprising that many people view the corporate media as a mere appendage to the oppressive system of racial capitalism.

By creating and sustaining the bogeyman of "international terrorism", the Americans and the British hope to deflect attention away from their own terminal crisis, where even the real estate market in the urban and suburban communities are collapsing amid the wasteful spending policies geared towards war and the varacious pursuit of profit.

Most of the public funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is chanelled to multi-national corporations such as Halliburton-Kellogg, Brown & Root, Titan, BlackWater USA and others who perform duties at inflated prices for the occupation forces and their puppets in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The argument by the Bush administration that the elimination of funding for the war by Congress, which the anti-war movement demands, would endanger the American soldiers, is false.

It is the illegal invasions and occupations which have created the precarious security situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq today the social situation is worse than it has ever been since the country was created.

Therefore, it is clear that American intervention is no solution to problems of the developing countries. These interventions only benefit the multi-national corporations and their allies.

Even the peoples of the imperialist countries are suffering from the decline in living standards, high unemployment and the current meltdown of the real estate markets.

Zimbabwe must resist the imposition of a "Somalian solution"

Since 2006, the American administration has intervened in Somalia through the western-backed regime in Ethiopia.

America's inability to achieve its objectives through their paid agents within Somalia itself has resulted in the Bush administration's encouragement and coordination of an invasion by Ethiopia in December of 2006.

This intervention has also been supported by the British Special Air Services Regiment, who along with the United States Special Forces, have overturned the growing influence of the Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia.

As a result of this intervention at the aegis of the United States, the social situation in Somalia has been destabilized.

Not satisfied with the role of the Ethiopian military, the Americans have launched their own bombing operations against the Somali people resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the displacement of thousands of others.

Unfortunately, the current leadership of the African Union has agreed to send in so-called peacekeeping troops without any discussion with all relevant stakeholders in Somalia. The Transitional Federal Government in Somalia, which is backed-up militarily by the Ethiopian army and the American Special Forces, has very little legitimacy inside the country.

Consequently, the presence of these foreign and US-backed elements have sparked growing resistance among the Somali masses. In recent weeks, these foreign elements and their AU allies have come under fire by guerrillas forces opposed to the occupation of the country.

The current leadership of the African Union is held by the western-backed government of President John Kuffour of Ghana. For the last two years, the designated leadership of the AU was supposed to be taken over by President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

However, since the Sudanese government has been targeted by the US, Britain and the EU for destabilization, they have not been allowed to take control of the AU. This illustrates clearly that the AU is facing the same problems as the former Organization of African Unity (OAU) as it relates to western influence over the internal and continental affairs of African peoples.

It is instructive that in light of the 50th anniversary of the independence of Ghana that a western-backed post-Nkrumaist government is following the political imperatives of the United States and Britain.

For it was Kwame Nkrumah who refused to accept the western nations acquiescence to settler-colonialism in Rhodesia and paid the ultimate price for doing so, whose legacy today is being distorted by those who come out of a political tradition that represents the antithesis of everything that Nkrumah stood for and advocated during his lifetime.

The current President of Ghana John Kuffour, who is the chair of the AU, has been quoted as describing the current situation in Zimbabwe as "embarrassing."

Nonetheless, it is not only embarassing but is moreso tragic, that the AU in 2007 could allow itself to be manipulated into entering Somalia by the United States and Britain without any serious consultation with all political tendencies within country, particularly those that are the strongest on the ground.

This is why the Republic of South Africa and other nations have refused to participate in the US-backed plans for the continuing occupation of Somalia.

This American engineered occupation is resulting in a situation where the current AU leadership will be perceived by the Somali masses, and the majority of people in the Horn of Africa as well, as being puppets of US and British imperialism and therefore open game for attack by the resistance forces inside the region.

Like Iraq and Afghanistan, the invovlement of the US and its allies can only worsen the social and political situations inside their territories.

Therefore, Zimbabwe is rightly refusing to allow the Americans, the British and the EU and their surrogates within the MDC and other allied groups, to dictate the terms of political dialogue inside the country.

The institutions of Africa such as the African Union and the Pan-African Parliament must develop and maintain an independent foreign policy that rejects American manipulation and influence.

The intervention of the United States in the internal affairs of Africa and other nations throughout the world in Asia and Latin America has never produced positive results for the majority of the populations so affected.

When the western-backed African states follow the political imperatives of the United States they must also realize that a growing peace movement in America is rejecting the whole premise of imperialist intervention and domination as the central focus of the nation's foreign policy.

In the 21st Century it is not possible to repeat the same colonialist and imperialist policies of the 15th to the 19th Centuries. The lessons of the national liberation movements in Africa during the 20th Century are reflective of what Nkrumah stated in his radio broadcasts from Guinea-Conakry after the CIA-backed coup of 1966, that "Ghana is out of the gambling house of colonialism forever."

It is these "games of change" that have destroyed Africa's potential to embark upon a genuinely independent course.

Consequently, the the western media campaign against Zimbabwe and other nations around the world such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, the DPRK, etc., must be seen for what they really are: the ideological supplements of an imperialist policy that is both outdated and therefore doomed to abysmal failure.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire and has published hundreds of articles and research reports in various publications, journals and web sites throughout the international community.
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